A Christmas Funeral

It was Christmastime of ought-five The whether had finally turned cold The news came that Mr. Ray had passed Now everyone had to be told About the plans to honor him And how we’d do that at the church Where he gave his life and two loves And now; an end to his search His daughter asked me to sing a song I was honored but afraid Afraid that I wasn’t worthy Then, He spoke; and I obeyed Mr. Ray’s grandson told me, “Your dad sang at my grandpa B's service.” I said, “That’s somethin',” and thought, “Thanks for making me nervous.” Bing Crosby, Eddie Arnold and me We sang Rock of Ages From Our Favorite Hymns we picked After turning lots of pages

Popular posts from this blog

Relatively Speaking

The term "relativism" gets thrown around too much these days. In the days following the election, relativism, as it relates to "values," was blamed for the liberals' loss. I think that's what some of them would like to think, but I, for one, don't buy it. This election was about security and terrorism and not much more. Generally speaking we mean relativism to describe the lack of any absolute truth in reality. To generalize even more, I mean it to describe a large number of Americans who's grandparents believed in God and had a very clear notion of right and wrong, but they no longer do. Scientism and pantheism have crept into the psyche of modern Americans and Truth has become a quaint idea that only unenlightened folks hold on to. If your Grandmother believes the Bible is Truth, well that's fine, she's old and they didn't know any better in her day. Today, we know things that they didn't know back then; right? Yes, that's...
Read more

June 6, 2004

OK, now you got me started. It just so happens that next month marks the 60th anniversary of D-Day. But you knew that already. If you didn't, you would have soon started seeing the books laid out in front of the bookstores and ads for the TV specials. It's a pretty big deal. You'll have to put up with me for a while and I'll probably get worse as the day approaches. For now let's just say it was a pivotal event in history. There's hardly a day goes by when I don't think about the guys who jumped off those boats and into hell. Some of them by the way, had been in those landing craft boats a full day already because the invasion was started and stopped the day before. They were really, really sick. The flat bottoms of their boats were covered with vomit and excrement; I'll bet they thought anything was better than that. I'll just mention one more thing tonight. Freedom like we enjoy in this country doesn't happen by magic. At the foundation o...
Read more

Concert for George

The Concert for George, a tribute to George Harrison, was on PBS the other night and we all sat down to watch it. It brought me to tears several times. What exactly brought on the tears? Well, it's like this: Eric Clapton was of course a close friend of George's for many years. So he was the producer of the show. Jeff Lynn was there too. Jeff Lynn is one of the premiere rock producers ever. So the show was just plain good. But what really did it was the authenticity of the guitar work. George Harrison was "just the guitar" player of the Beatles. So they happen to be the biggest rock act ever, he's still just the guitar player. You don't hear the extended solos from Harrison that we've become used to in the rock n roll world. Typically, just 8 bars - sometimes 16. When he took the solo, it counted. It had melody. It meant something. So Clapton was smart enough to get two great guitarists to back up the sound for this concert. And man were they good. The...
Read more